Ruby Scott

[Ruby is from Davenport, but her story is interesting.]

August 16, 1945 Davenport Times-Tribune

Japs Have Surrendered

August 16, 1945 Davenport Times-Tribune

"Secret Out" --Cpl. Scott At Atomic Bomb Test Field DAVENPORT--"Our secret is out--the atomic bomb, I can now tell you that I am at the bomb testing station, Los Alamos, N.M.," Corporal Ruby Scott informed her father by letter this week. She revealed that since last February she has been secretary for a Columbia University scientist who has an honorary commission in the army to help perfect the atomic bomb.

The duties of Cpl. Scott have been a mystery to her father and her sister, Mrs. Harold Lybecker, for six months. All her outgoing and incoming mail has been censored even though she has been stationed in the United States.

Several months ago Mr. Lybecker asked Cpl. Scott in a letter "What are you doing?" In ensuing letters Cpl. Scott did not answer the question and offered no explanation, until she was on furlough her two weeks ago.

Even when she was here on furlough, Cpl. Scott could not reveal her duties or tell her correct station. She was supposedly stationed with an army engineering group at Santa Fe, N. M., but actually was at the Los Alamos field sixty miles away all the time. The only hint she had mentioned to her father while here was that "part of her might end up in Washington" if things went wrong at her station.

Cpl. Scott returned to Los Alamos from her recent furlough on August 2 to find the atomic bomb experiments had been successful, and after the revelation of the secret by the army, was allowed to inform relatives of her station. Her knowledge of the details of the secret bomb remains unknown, but it is certain that she had a role in the great work to shorted the agony of war.

She was a clerk at the Washington Water Power company here prior to entering the woman's army corps center at Des Moines, Iowa. In February she was on of two WACs flown to Los Alamos to be interviewed for her present position.

Cpl. Scott brought home the letter from her sister. On the margin beside the question a censor had instructed "Do not answer this question."